Långvarig och akut smärta: hos patienter och boende: en studie genomförd av studenter på sjuksköterskeprogrammet

The aim of the study was to map out pain and pain treatment among patients in hospitals and persons in special accommodations as well as in ordinary living.

Method: Nurse students collected the data during their clinical education at hospitals and in special accommodations or in ordinary living. Also the clinical teachers helped out with supporting the students during data collection. The students made assessments of pain where they had their clinical practice during the spring 2009. The students got, though collecting data, a training in how to provide information to the staff and patients/residents, compile results and to give feed-back about the findings to the department. The study was not conducted as a total survey, in other words was a selection of respondents that were included in the results.

Results: In total 419 assessments of pain was made and 35% of respondents reported long standing pain and 14% reported acute pain. The respondents with long standing pain were older (76 years and 69 years respectively), more women (67% and 53% respectively) and more were in special accommodations or in ordinary living (37% and 17% respectively) than among those with acute pain. The respondents with acute pain more often agreed with that the staff asked about if he/she had pain (84% and 73% respective) while the respondents with long standing pain to a greater extent agreed with that they tried to hide their own pain (acute pain: 43% resp. long standing pain: 59%). The most common strategies to handle the pain among those with acute pain was to ask for something to alleviate the pain (84%), lie down and rest (78%) or to try thinking on something else (64%) while it among those with long standing pain was to lie down and rest (83%), ask for something to alleviate the pain (73%) or to try thinking on something else (70%). Of the students that collected the data and reported the findings to the staff 51 also evaluated their participation in the study. Of these, 74% experienced that their understanding for research increased, 51% that their interest för pain assessment had increased and 55% that their knowledge about pain had increased.

 Conclusion:

Long standing pain was most common among women and elderly persons. The strategies used among the participants for making staff aware about the pain, and the strategies to handle once own pain differed depending on weather the pain was acute or long standing. Participating in the data collection and other research activities has a positive effect for nursing students understanding for research and to some extent for their interest in the area under study.